


Martian Server Maintenance and Other Quirks of the 31st Century

by takatakataka



Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen, idk - Freeform, uhhhhhhhhhhh - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-18
Updated: 2019-09-18
Packaged: 2020-11-02 08:20:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,063
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20681762
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/takatakataka/pseuds/takatakataka
Summary: Revolution brews in the heart of the now thousand year old Imperial Union, dissent is common amongst even the most moderate citizens and some of it's most ancient heroes grow more jaded.This story is not about any of that.





	Martian Server Maintenance and Other Quirks of the 31st Century

**Author's Note:**

> hhhhhhhhhhhhh so I don't actually expect anyone to read this but idk where else to put it so you have it now. It's just a mess tbh.

** _The internet is a graveyard, so let’s go graverobbing!_ ** Was blazed in big bold letters across the header of the /DN/ board of DangerU. Seeing it always made Zoyeh smirk, it reminded her of something her mother would say about the Galaxy. Minus the grave robbing part, anyway. DeadNet, or /DN/, was an interesting place to the young Vanyr, watching people put together the pieces of an ancient series of events from seemingly unrelated websites that had been previously buried under a literal millennium of time, changing server hosts, and other equally dead websites. It was silly, but she found that it was incredibly easy to become enraptured by the stories of old dramas and petty feuds between different personalities whose last descendant had probably died 400 years ago. There were even a few threads dedicated to discussing specific peoples careers who hadn’t been around for hundreds of years. Even from the inside, it was incredibly strange. 

Zoyeh hadn’t done it much herself, browsing the old net, she’d tried it a few times though. The hard part was honestly figuring out exactly how to do it. While the internet she used today was technically the same one some random nobody had used to look at pictures of strange cartoon girls who spoke a language they didn’t understand in the 21st century, there were a few caveats to actually going to that old part. As it was, if the internet was completely open than any search would bring up millions of ancient and likely irrelevant or now inaccurate results, so all mainstream browsers used an extensive amount of filtering to the point that you have to specifically seek out anything older than 100 years old and anything beyond 250 is completely inaccessible no matter what you do. 

So, how do you get back to the 20th century you ask? You have to use a purpose-built browser. Once you have one of those and know what to look for, you can potentially go back as far as the 1990s! This is only theoretical however, in practice, there are many road bumps. The 2550s are pretty much a coin flip in terms of getting anything useful, the Great Schism created a whole host of issues in terms of data preservation even at the time and the number of separatist planets that just neglected server maintenance was obscene. Things remain pretty consistent before that until you get into before 2200, the early days of space travel meant there were a few competing methods of transmitting data and so anything that got totally shut down was lost making the net from that time pretty spotty. Then you get to before 2100 and it’s a complete crapshoot, most people consider a 5% survival rate of data from the time pretty optimistic since the Empire was just trying to not fall apart in that era. Anything before 2033 is just assumed to not exist unless it’s actually found, Nuclear War and 40% of the planet losing power forever doesn’t do technology many favors as it turns out. 

This is all without mentioning the language issue, mind. The further back you go the more the language changes. While it sounds cool to go all the way back to the 21st century to see the early days of the internet, reality sets in once you realize it’s all written in long-dead languages. 

So yeah, when Zoyeh tried digging through the old net, or dead net depending on how edgy she felt, she mostly just ended up with 404s or half corrupted pages. Well, that or the dullest blogs imaginable. The furthest back she’d ever gotten was when an acquaintance linked her a webpage from around 2120 that was written entirely in some incomprehensible gibberish called English. According to the more avid users of /DN/ this was typical, while she had no idea how the average browser dealt with the monotony she appreciated their efforts nonetheless. 

The most interesting user, in her opinion anyway, was /U/Lore-Friend. They were a Lore Holder and presumably linguist from the Imperial Archives who’d pop in around the end of each month with a few discoveries they’d made browsing the Archives Internet data stores. While what they shared wasn’t classified or anything, it was unique and, more importantly, couldn't be found anywhere else. The info typically coming directly from newly unearthed servers brought back from the Dead Lands by Stalkers. As the hardware was so old and often just tweaked enough by the radiation and anomalies that it made trying to bring the data back onto the public net a potentially destructive proposition. So, if you wanted to find out what was on them you either waited on Lore-Friend or you went to Earth, went to the Great Library, went down into the underground Imperial Archives and then made an appointment to come back in a month and dig around old data files by yourself for an hour. 

Most people just waited on Lore Friend. 

She glanced at the clock, 18:46, and then the calendar before huffing and leaning back in her chair to rub her face, _ Guess they didn’t find anything worth posting this month. _She thought as she closed the tab and switched to the news, she got up from her chair and turned a knob on her speaker so she could hear the report in the next room over.

“...and that was the weather.” Said a feminine voice, likely the newer Catovan anchor if Zoyeh remembered right. “The ongoing protest in the Shimabasa district broke out into rioting this morning, police have been working to bring the situation under control but it is recommended that citizens avoid the area in the meantime.” Zoyeh was completely undressed as she reached into her bag, trying and failing not to think about the news too much lest it make her angry. “The incident is part of a string of demonstrations turning into large scale violence across Imperial colonies in the past few months.” She snorted at that as she stepped into her wetsuit.

“Funny how you didn’t mention the riot on the Empresses doorstep.” She muttered, pulling the skin tight suit up her pale blue legs, grunting a bit as she forced it to slip over her hips. _ I swear to god this better not be getting tighter. _

“...according to our correspondents, similar riots have been happening across Republican space. We go to our man on the ground Johanus for more-” 

Zoyeh tuned out the rest. “Always remember, the Republic is just as bad! Anything to distract from Culpa, yeah?” She sneered to herself, zipping up the suit before glancing at the clock on her wall. 18:52. “Better get going.” Quickly, she pulled up a pair of baggy pants and threw an unbuttoned shirt on. One last check to make sure she had everything before checking herself over in the mirror. 

“Well,” She sighed. “I’ve looked worse.” She was a young woman, barely 25 if she remembered her birthday right. Her blue skin was paler than a Vanyrs probably should be, but that was to be expected given her job, and was complimented nicely by her silver hair which parted between the pair of little horns that stuck out of her forehead. She leaned a bit, pulling her lower eyelid down a bit to check for any red in her eyes and trying to ignore the fact the left horn was slightly shorter than the right. 

Satisfied, she grabbed her bag and hurried out the door. Pausing a moment before passing the staircase, remembering the tightness of her suit, and considered taking them today instead. She then glanced out the floor to ceiling windows and remembered she lived on the 75th floor while her job was on the ground level. She went past the various apartments on her floor and into the elevator down the hall instead. 

Sand was everywhere on Mars, even after a century of terraforming the Empire never could turn it into the lush paradise that science fiction had promised. Even the elevator itself was covered in a thin grimy layer of the stuff Zoyeh noted as she pressed the button for the 27th floor. The only places that were truly free of the crimson grit were airtight and sealed away, otherwise, it didn’t matter how wealthy or careful or high up you were, there would always be a build-up of the red dust somewhere. Always in a pile in the corners of the room, stuck in the groove where the floor meets the wall, mixed into the carpet, it was inescapable. Baths were simply out of the question on the planet as you’d just end up sitting in a pool of red silt. No matter what anyone did, no matter how concerted the efforts and no matter how many people pitched in to clean away the grime, Mars would always come back and reclaim what is rightfully hers within a few days. Zoyeh suddenly felt the need to check the weather on her phone, no sandstorm warning. 

_ Good, I need to get a hood. _ She thought, unconsciously running her fingers through her hair a few times until she was satisfied there was no dust in it.

The elevator chimed dully as it lurched to a stop, the dusted over display above the door reading 27. The doors opened sluggishly at first before speeding up somewhat, she stepped through them and out into the foyer before they could go all the way. The lower floors of the building were much less residential than the upper levels, featuring a haphazard mix of businesses or public areas. It was a fairly common practice in the city and according to actual city planners it made navigating the place a nightmare. Personally, she just thought it was rather charming to be able to take an elevator down to the grocery and still be within walking distance of the local sex shop. She passed a small phone repair store in the wall and entered the sky bridge that was directly across from the elevator, her work being at the connected building across the street. She was sure the view of the bustling city out the windows would have been breathtaking once, before 100 years of dust and grime built up around them, anyway. 

Arriving on the other side, Zoyeh decided to grab something to eat from a little hole in the wall place she remembered being on this floor before stepping into work, while it wasn’t technically on the way it also wasn’t a huge detour either. She turned left at the stairs and passed through a few more worn hallways before reaching her destination, instead of a welcoming little open door shop she instead found disappointment. The door was shut and the sign read that it was closed for repairs, out front there were four people talking amongst themselves. Though, on closer inspection it was more like two of them were pestering one while another browsed a tablet. She decided to back around the corner and observe a moment. 

There were two police officers talking to a slightly cocky if incredibly exasperated looking ivory-skinned lilum. Talking wasn’t quite the right word, it was more like adult fangirling. The scene would almost be comical if the officers didn’t have Assault rifles, ACARs with fixed stocks that had been modified to only fire in semiautomatic if she remembered what she read on the /FE/ board right, slung across their backs. It was incredibly unusual to see Police using such equipment, they carried pistols sure but rifles and armor were almost unheard of. 

_ Riots must be bad. _

The Lilum was rather distinctive looking, she was taller than most and had a pair of vaguely unidentifiable animal ears atop her head that matched her dull violet hair and twitched in irritation occasionally. Her arms were crossed under her rather buxom chest that would likely be well hidden beneath the incredibly old and worn green marine overcoat. Even from a distance, she could see that the small black and white Imperial flag on the coats upper arm was incredibly worn and frayed. A long, gradually curved blade with a twin knife hung on her left side from a belt around her waist. Even without the coat and blade, it was easy to tell this was a lilum who’d specially modified themselves for combat performance. Zoyeh was sure she recognized her but couldn’t quite place her name. She remembered seeing her face on Marine recruitment posters in passing. Beside the group, there was a man in a duster and wide-brimmed hat checking a tablet. Zoyeh leaned in a bit from around the corner to see if she could hear anything, but without moving her head the lilums piercing green eyes suddenly snapped up to stare at her. Zoyeh quickly ducked back around the corner and hurried back down the hall and down the staircase. She didn’t know what was going on but what she did know was that a specially made murder android just told her to fuck off with their eyes and she wasn’t going to argue with them. 

Now hurrying down 27 flights of stairs and desperately trying to not think about a moderately famous ara ara murder bot slitting her throat in the night, Zoyeh decided to focus on her destination, her job. She was a freelance server technician, which was a tad more involved than it sounds. 

In order to become a freelancer, you need a license which means applying for one with the planetary government's Ministry of Information Security. After a few weeks, if your application is approved, you get called in for an interview. Pass the interview and you’ll be deemed worth sparing enough time for some MILE G-Men to look through your official record for any criminal exploits or shady dealings. If you come up clean then you get admitted to classes that go over all the finer points of server maintenance, system repair, and swimming. Finish your classes and you’re handed a license, access to the Ticket Service, and, more importantly, access to the vault. 

This whole process takes on average a year, maybe two if the government is in enough of a clusterfuck, or possibly less than 6 months if the Empress smiles down on you from on high. 

_ Though, considering how she looks in public, I don’t think she actually can smile. _ Zoyeh thought to herself.

The reason for this vetting process is a simple one: Mars was a very important planet. Often being called the Jewel of the Empire. It was a central hub for commerce, shipping, manufacturing, and even culture based on all the internet personalities and celebrities that lived on it. As a result of all this prosperity it was also considered the most densely populated planet in all of the known galaxy, which meant that it needed a lot of processing power and data storage. So, beneath the city- 

“Or cities.” Zoyeh mused dryly, now almost completely distracted from the _really hot MILFbot _from earlier. 

So, beneath the city, three, multi-miles spanning vaults were constructed. There was one for each of the three districts, the Soviet Quarter, the Japanese Quarter, and the Zerxian Quarter, while the nations that they took their names from no longer existed, the spirit of them still did and was reflected in everything from the food to the server maintenance policies. Zoyeh lived and worked in the Zerxian Quarter. Contained within each of these vaults was virtually ever single server on Mars and a mind-boggling amount of seawater pumped in from the Scarlet Ocean. 

_ Maybe that’s why water is so god damn expensive on this planet. _She thought, reaching into her pocket and retrieving a dull red tablet, a dose of Red Ash, equivalent to roughly a full 16-ounce bottle of purified water in hydration. She popped the tab into her mouth and let it dissolve on her tongue, the slight but distinctive spicy tang running down her throat as she swallowed. 

By now she had reached the ground floor of the building and made her way to the lobby, the sand on ground level was much worse than it was on the upper floors despite the janitors best efforts. Much larger piles of the stuff was built up in just about every corner and if there was a groove it was almost certainly lined with red grains, but she knew this was nothing compared to the streets. Stepping through the door, which couldn’t even be seen out of properly thanks to the grime over the window panes, she walked out into the day. Well, what was left of the day anyway, checking her phone she saw it would only be another hour or so before it disappeared behind the horizon completely.

The streets of Mars are always a bit of a shock to people who’ve only heard of the planet, they hear about the sand but they never really believe it until they see the stuff piled up like snowdrifts along the sides of the road. There’s a saying that everything feels ancient on Mars, and it’s probably at least partially because every building looks about 150 years older than it actually is after years of being whipped by the dust. Even the best-maintained buildings still have massive deposits of the stuff built up in little nooks and crannies of the architecture. It may seem like a tired point but it’s a necessary one, Mars is fucking sandy. 

Zoyeh crossed the street quickly. Traffic wasn’t much of a thing on Mars, or most of the Empire, thanks to general lack of private cars so you rarely had to wait longer than a minute for a lull to cross through. She noted that the sidewalks were strangely empty today with only a few scattered pedestrians instead of the typical mass of people. This was incredibly odd, Mars was the hub of the Sol System, they should be practically overflowing regardless of weather or time of day. 

“Protests must be bad,” she murmured. Trying to shake it off before stepping through the door of the building and into the lobby. It had a name once - probably - but it had been slowly forgotten once the sign over the door had been worn to the point of being illegible. That was a common thing on Mars, It was always funny to her how people talked about other cities on other worlds. Referring to buildings with names. If you needed to get to a specific tower, because everything on this planet was a tower, you had to know the street and address. If you asked a local for a building by a name they’d brush you off or look at you like an idiot, ask’em for a street and they could recite the entire route no matter where they were without even thinking about it.

Zoyeh stopped a moment to try and talk with the receptionist, a mostly pureblood looking human with the split lower jaw and claw-like hands of her Catovan grandfather, and friend named Sigrina. Emphasis should be on try however, as she was holding the receiver of the phone to her ear and quickly mouthed a hasty ‘later’ to her before returning to the call. Zoyeh shrugged, mildly disappointed that she’d be going into the vault without at least some human contact, and passed by the desk into an employees-only section. 

She passed through a break room and then past a few back offices before reaching a mag locked door beside a broom closet. She pulled a card from her back pocket and swiped it through a scanner beside it, the door let out a soft click and pulled open without any resistance and she let herself inside. The door locked behind her as she slipped the card back into her pocket and descended a set of stairs lit by buzzing lights. It took her a few minutes to reach the bottom, the vault had to be built underneath the sewer system and several other underground works so calling it deep would be understating it. A very familiar and very dull changing room lay before her, the unpainted lockers reflected harshly in the bright light and a small open set of showers were tucked off to the side. Zoyeh slid off her pack and quickly stripped down into her wet suit. In under a minute she had thrown her clothes into her designated locker and secured them with a scan of her hand. After that, it was a simple matter of entering the airlock and letting it seal behind her.

The airlock always had a slightly musty smell Zoyeh thought as she slipped on her breathing mask, somehow she’d just never gotten used to it despite having entered and exited through it hundreds of times. The pressure began to adjust to match that of the Vault, the process took a few minutes and just enough time to get the oxygen tank from her pack sorted and slipped over her shoulders. After about 3 minutes the red light turned on, filling the room with a bloody glow, and a timer on a digital display began counting down from 30. She readied herself, widening her stance and tensing forward. The timer always felt like it took 3 times as long when she did this, but she knew if she didn’t she’d potentially be risking a concussion. 

The telltale beeping of the last 10 seconds kicked in, the Vanyr swimmer clenched her teeth and rolled her tongue back as far from them as possible. 

5 seconds. She took a deep breath through her clenched jaw.

A dull buzzer went off as the airlocks outer door opened. Water flooded in immediately to fill the new space, Zoyeh braced hard forward. The torrent slammed into her, almost knocking her backward, but not quite. Within a few moments the water began to settle down, allowing her to reach forward and pull herself out from the lock and into the actual Vault itself before pausing a moment to look over her workspace. 

Rows of towering racks stretched on for miles away from her in all directions, lights dully blinking in the uncomfortably warm water and contrasting sharply with the coral reefs that grew between the rows along the floor of the Vault. Two unidentifiable figures in bulky suits that resembled those of 21st-century astronauts fiddled with one of the racks a little ways down the row, the patches on their arms identifying them as public techs, government IT. She didn’t envy them, each individual server was pretty easy to understand and deal with for any tech no matter how green, but taken as a whole they became impossibly daunting. But, as a freelancer, she didn’t have to deal with big system-wide issues like they did. 

_ I do wish I had one of those suits though… _ Zoyeh thought. They were bulkier than her skin tight affair, sure, but they were temperature-controlled and had the oxygen tanks built-in and were just far more comfortable. They were arguably safer too, as at its coolest the water in the chamber was warm like piss and could even become dangerously hot right next to overloaded servers, _ That’s usually when you call in the public techs, no matter how good the reward is. _

Zoyeh slipped her phone, sealed inside of a waterproof case, out of a pouch on her bag and began to navigate its menus with the arrow keys along the bottom. Lazily, she swam deeper as she signed in and began to browse through the Ticket Services listings. Most of the really successful techs had all these little strategies about peak hours and hotspots, but in her experience, it was always peak hours on Mars regardless of if it was five o’clock on a Friday or if it was three in the morning on Tuesday and something was always going wrong everywhere. 

A new alert appeared for a server near her, two quick key presses and it was enlarged. Orentech, failure in Lilum repair database, 3 rows over to the west, Rack P15, 10,000 Reign reward. Zoyeh considered it a moment, rolling her options around in her head. 

Ten grand was certainly nothing to scoff at, sure, you could live off that comfortably for about half a month, maybe even a whole one if you got extra frugal. But OrenTech always paid big regardless of the issue because they knew it meant it’d get fixed faster and because they had all that extra cash from basically being government-owned. By OrenTechs standards, ten large was pretty mediocre but was still enough for just about every tech within a mile to come scrambling to that server. It was a recipe for violence and personally, she didn’t like risking a fight. 

Now, while she did intend for tonight to be a big one for her, she also knew she only needed about 5,000 to make rent at the end of the month and she could probably do that tonight if she just went hard, maybe more if she got extra creative. So, she made her decision and closed the alert. Scrolling a bit down the page, she found an offer from a local courier service for a minor glitch in their records, 5 rows over to the northeast, Rack K42, 150 Reigns. 

_ Small potatoes but a good warm-up for the night _ she thought as she accepted the contract. Putting the phone back in its pouch as she started swimming in the direction.

Technically speaking, you could own a server above ground on Mars. The issue was size. It wasn’t unheard of for tech-savvy private citizens to have a small private one somewhere in their apartment for instance. However, Imperial regulations stated that servers over a certain height and square footage were banned for private or corporate ownership. The official reason being that it was to maximize the available living and workspace, when you build everything vertically and 90% of your planet is city, you need to make the most of the space available. So, all the corporations, regardless of how big, had to rent space from the government. 

While most people were satisfied with this explanation, Zoyeh had always shared her other mothers opinion that it was mostly so the government could further suppress corporations to minimize their threat. Unlike her father however, Zoyeh didn’t have a problem with the government crushing the throat of capitalists under the boot of regulation.

Then they established freelancers when it was realized that there simply weren’t enough public techs to meet the demands of the private servers. So the public techs just fixed the public and government systems while the many, many freelancers handled the rest. The only real downside of this freelancer system was that while everyone was vetted and proved to be reasonably competent, the vaults weren’t monitored all that closely. Technically speaking the Martian War Mind kept an eye on the various security systems but, in practice, the War Mind was also monitoring every military and government security system on the planet. It had been proven as far back as the 2600s that the War Mind would only ever actually notice what you did if it was really really obvious. As a result of this lack of oversight, you could very easily be attacked in the Vaults by another freelancer over a ticket and they’d see no consequences. At the same time it was also very easy to swipe money from the companies you were servicing, at least if you played it smart and didn’t take much at a time.

Zoyeh scanned the sides of the rows carefully, each one marked with large red numbers. All along the edges was a large build-up of barnacles and algae, intentionally being missed by the cleaning drones to support the vaults ecosystem without letting it obstruct the markers. She found her row and turned into it, counting off the racks in her head as she went. She swam past a few fish along the way, most of the fish in the vaults were descended from the ones that had been brought in along with the water when they were first filled, but new ones regularly got in and old ones got out when the water was circulated to keep it from growing stagnant.

She suddenly remembered hearing a story from a few years ago when the vault in the Soviet quarters' filter apparently failed and a shark got in. The thing lurked around the vault for two full weeks and killed at least 3 techs before the War Mind finally spotted it. It stayed in the vault for another week before they eventually had to bring in a group of Marine Raiders from the central fleet since they knew how to fight in weird gravity just to kill the thing. 

She suddenly had the urge to check behind her for murderous sea life. She did, there was nothing but fish and more servers. 

Shaking her head, Zoyeh went back to counting off racks. _ 39, 40, 41, 42. _She slowed to a stop and glanced up and down the massive spire of tech, standing at roughly about 5 stories tall, it was a little bit daunting to try and find the specific component she needed to deal with. She prayed that the contractor was smart enough to know you need to include the specific section as she got her phone back out. Scanning the additional details she found what she needed, section D60, roughly 10 or so sections above her. A quick 30 second swim upwards and she was there with her kit hooked in, the system scanned her device to ensure its registration was matched with that of one of the persons who’d accepted the ticket and allowed her full access. 

The issue was relatively simple to fix, it was mostly just some weak code that had finally buckled after however many updates. While Zoyeh wasn’t an exceptional coder, she knew a fix that wasn’t more than a line of code and she was done. Before registering the ticket as fulfilled she did a quick root around their files until she found what she was looking for, an unassuming, now completely unprotected business account loaded with Reign. 

She hesitated a moment, sure, the War Mind wouldn’t notice and the business certainly wouldn’t miss it if she kept it small. But at the same time, she prided herself on her professionalism and good conduct up to now. However, her average nightly take was barely 1000 even at her best. She knew she could make rent regardless of what she did, but she also wanted to make rent without having to resort to the bread lines afterward. She sighed heavily as she decided, making a very small withdrawal of 100 Reigns. 

Now satisfied, she covered her digital tracks and disconnected her repair kit. With the press of a button on her phone the contract was registered as complete and 150 Reigns were deposited in her account, giving her a flat 250 Reign profit. She swam slowly back the way she came as she searched through Ticket Service for another worthwhile contract. By the time she exited her row she had one up and ready to accept. An office, problems with their accounting system, 11 rows over to the southwest, Rack G63, 500 Reigns.

“And now the night really begins.” Zoyeh grinned, her uncertainty now gone, and kicked off in the direction of her next paycheck.

******

It was 3 am when she finally bothered to check the time, having exited the vault half an hour ago and now dry and fully dressed. Her wetsuit half-heartedly thrown in a bundle into her bag. To say she was content with her night would be understating it, a quick look in her account confirmed what she already knew, she’d made a cool 3200 Reign. Roughly triple what she’d of made if she had only taken the rewards instead of skimming extra off the tops. She couldn’t help but smile a little as she set off up the stairs, it wasn’t enough to cover rent just yet but she still had a week and she could make the missing 1800 easily over the next few days unless she somehow got cockblocked on every ticket by some insanely augmented Tech or something.

That thought did give her pause as she suddenly remembered the Lilum who’d invested all their Reign into swimming and speed augs who just blocked everyone out of the high-value tickets for a solid month. The only reason they still weren’t dominating was because they got rich quick and then moved off-world. But the likelihood of something like that happening again was...more than she wanted to think about. 

The rest of her journey to the surface was easy enough, no more troublesome thoughts or realizations along the way and she was positively beaming by the time she reached the lobby. Her smile faltered a little when she discovered that Sigrina was gone, replaced by a bored-looking Catovan who was idly playing something on his phone rather than working. She wasn’t exactly surprised considering the time, but she was still disappointed. It’d been months since the two had actually talked properly. 

“Should probably just switch to a day schedule…” Zoyeh muttered, heading for the door. “Would make things a hell of a lot easier.”

Zoyeh stepped out into the still rather empty streets, now made emptier by the expected early morning slow down in traffic. While this was what she had expected, she still felt incredibly unnerved by it, suddenly becoming very aware of just how much the worn and beaten towers loomed over her. The understanding that she was just one tiny insignificant mortal in a millennia-old Empire of trillions ruled by a few impossibly old immortals was now front and center and everything else was just noise. 

She forced herself to look down at the ground, attempting to root herself back in what she could control. 

_ Eyes shut. Deep breaths. _ Repeated in her mind several times, words a therapist had said to her during a panic attack when she was 13. _ Focus on those you know. Those you do not know don’t exist. Focus on the present. The past is myth and the future is illusory. Focus on the real. _ Her heartbeat began to steady as she recited the mantra. _ Now, one. Two. Three. _

She opened her eyes, slightly shaken but now functional. Remembering a nice 24-hour restaurant a block or so over, she decided to grab something to eat, hoping a walk and a full belly would put her mind off such concerns. 

“Trouble?” A masculine voice asked from behind her, causing her to jump out of her skin. Turning to face its source, she found a man dressed in a long duster coat and wide-brimmed hat leaning against the wall by the entrance of the building she’d come from. She was frozen in place now, unsure of how to react exactly. What she was sure of was that she’d seen this man earlier, he had been keeping quiet in the combat lilums shadow. She reached an immediate decision when he began to step towards her, she turned and ran. “Hey! Get back here!”

Zoyeh ran up the street faster than she thought she could and intended to run all the way back to her apartment if she had too.

“I’m a Ranger god damn it! Hold it right there!” The voice called out again, she started to run faster. She didn’t have to look over her shoulder to know he was giving chase. 

_ Fuck fuck I’m so stupid why the fuck did I think I could get away with that what the fuck!?! _She was screeching internally. Rapidly turning the corner she slipped a bit on the sandy sidewalk and stumbled, losing her momentum before righting herself and speeding down the block. Unfortunately, this was just enough of a slip to give the Ranger a chance to catch her, a realization she became acutely aware of when she was suddenly slammed into the pavement and pinned to the ground. Zoyeh desperately, awkwardly attempted to claw at her assailant before immediately stopping when she felt the cold muzzle of a gun jammed into her back. 

“You’re under arrest for fraud.” The Ranger stated bluntly, Zoyeh muttered another quiet fuck as he began to angrily droll “You have the right to-” as he gathered her hands behind her back with his free hand and secure them. She blocked out the spiel as she twisted her head around to get a glimpse of him, his face was obscured by the shadow of the brim of his hat but she could clearly see the semi-automatic pistol pointed directly at her spine as well as a glimpse of the grey ability-enhancing plug suit he was wearing beneath the coat. She was also pretty sure she saw a second pistol in a holster tucked under his right arm.

She spat angrily at him, just missing. “Fucking Rangers!” She hissed, what little of his expression she could make out was unimpressed. “Shouldn’t you be on Culpa? Or can you not handle reals shi-” She was interrupted as he pistol-whipped her, sending an intense and lingering spike of pain through her skull. 

“I go where I’m needed!” He declared, now having completely lost his temper. She chuckled at the weak defense. “I don’t have to defend myself to you!” He snarled. “How about I take you to those nice officers you saw me with earlier? I’m sure they’d be a lot more interested in you than me.” Zoyehs heart suddenly dropped at that prospect, fully realizing she really was being arrested.

Despondency suddenly changed to confusion when she felt the Ranger get ripped off her.

“Actually no you aren’t hotshot.” They spoke in a smooth, feminine voice that had been worn and frayed at the edges by time. “Cops tried to 66 us and Zero is on the move. Shits hitting the fan hard around here, we need to move.” 

“Excuse me? You mind telling me what you meant by any of that?” The ranger demanded, Zoyeh twisted her body awkwardly to get a look at the two. The interesting new voice belonged to the Lilum from earlier whose threadbare coat was now stained with blood along its arms and front and the Imperial flag on the arm was visibly hanging on by a few threads. Her left hand was resting on the hilt of her sword, visibly tensed to draw it. She could see some of the Rangers face now and was surprised to see he was much younger than she’d imagined. 

“You mean the 66 part or the rest of it?” The women asked, the Ranger went to answer but was cut short. “It actually doesn’t matter, it’s before your time or above your pay grade respectively so just shut up and come on.”

“Takarra.” The young Ranger said flatly. The lilum narrowed her eyes, she clearly didn’t like his tone. Zoyeh recognized the name and suddenly knew exactly who the Lilum was! She remembered seeing threads on the Military board of Danger/U/ specifically about wanting to fuck her. Zoyeh decided it was probably best not to tell her about that. “You can’t just expect me to let a suspect go after-”

“It was barely 2000 Reigns! Just let it go hot shot!” Takarra cut him off, having clearly lost patience. He didn’t appreciate what she’d called him if his expression was any indicator “Now get those fucking cuffs off her.” She ordered, he hesitated a moment before catching another death stare. The Ranger quickly undid Zoyehs restraints and helped her to her feet. The Lilum forced the sword on her hip partially out of its sheath with a flick of her thumb before pulling it the rest of the way free and dramatically twirling it till it was oriented correctly in her right hand, the telltale dull blue field of energy of an Enhanced blade briefly flashing to life before becoming imperceptible again. 

“Jesus christ do you ever not show off?” The ranger asked, Zoyeh personally found that ironic coming from a ranger. Takarra ignored him as she leveled her blade at Zoyeh. 

“You have some insane luck, you know that? Now keep a low profile and stay out of trouble, alright?” Takarra asked, now sounding more concerned. Before Zoyeh could even nod though she flipped tones completely. “Or, actually, fuck this planet. Do whatever you want. Just probably don’t take the underground tonight.” She turned away and started down the street back to the building she’d presumably come from. 

“D-Did you seriously just advocate breaking the law in front of me?” The Ranger Zoyeh was now internally calling Hotshot called after her. 

“I did! And I’ll go tell more people to commit worse crimes unless you get your ass moving and come with me! The Kid’s gonna need backup!”

“You seriously can’t keep calling the commander a kid.” Hotshot sighed as he started after her, leaving Zoyeh dumbfounded under the flickering light of a street lamp. 

“What can I say? I fought in the Pharosian Wars, you’re all like toddlers to me.” Takarra called back without looking. Zoyeh tried to process this information, attempting to do the math in her head based on her barely remembered ancient history before finally working up the courage to speak. 

“How old are you!?” Zoyeh called out. It was a strange question and odd feeling so she added an awkward “Ma’am!” for good measure.

Takarra abruptly stopped, did a perfectly executed 180 on her heel, cocked her hip and threw up her index and middle finger in front of her right eye and proudly proclaimed, “Forever 17 dude!” in a voice far younger than her real one with the cockiest smile she could manage. Just as quickly as she put on this display it disappeared and the swordswoman returned to her walk. 

“Th-thank you!” Zoyeh called after her, but the two figures had already disappeared into the building across the street. She stood there for several minutes, she was very confused, distressed, and uncertain all at once. She ran through option after option of where to go before eventually deciding on the obvious and stumbled her way back home. 


End file.
